Fragments in Five
by Epithelial
Summary: When Wilson suddenly dies, there is no one but House left to pick up the pieces. A series of drabbles merged into one. Slash.


See end for notes, disclaimers and such like that.

**Fragments in Five  
**By Ithelial

_He said, "The rain, loving."  
I said, "The narcissus, drunk,  
Drunk with the rain."  
_-Heliodora, by H.D.

**Breath**:

House blinked, seeing black dots clouding his vision. He closed them, and then forced them open again. Cuddy was still looking at him, her cherry slash of lips twisting and frowning. He looked at her lips again, and pushed down the urge to mimic her actions and do the same. He remembered seeing a cuckoo bird when he was a child at the zoo; he was doing the exact same thing. He had just been broken, hollowed out by a few simple words. It was time to be reborn and built up. Suddenly, all of the 'mommy' jokes he had made about Cuddy were playing into his situation.

"House, what was that?" She asked tearfully, trying to hear something that had never been said. Her lips were pale and her eyes were very, very dark, she shuddered and lowered her face into her hands. House made no move to comfort her; because when she looked at him, it was with that half-lidded glare that _he_ had given him on _those_ nights--

She reached for him and touched his face. Her manicured nails felt cold as they swept across his brow, then her arms were around his neck and her face was buried in the space between his shoulders and face.

"Hey, stop!" He pushed her away, watching the dark fringe of hair unravel from the rest of her hair. "I don't do comfort." He meant for the words to come out sharp and tenacious, to show her that he really meant business.

But she tried again, to gather him up in a hug, but then saw the firm set of his jaw, finally heard the harsh words. She settled her hands back to her side. He thought about how good it would be it hit her, to smash her mascara lined cheeks against the small flat of her desk until blood came, until there was nothing left of anything that would ever remind him--

"_Don't worry; it was nothing. A little head injury." _

House stood up, clutching his cane. A thin trickle of sweat ran down his sleeve and down his knuckles, onto the wood. He lurched past her, unsteady as always, out into the hall. Chase was sitting at a chair against the wall, oblivious to the concerned looks he was getting from all of the nurses. Hot, blonde, with a British accent-- House knew that Chase's good days were when he wasn't getting mauled during clinic hours. His hands were playing worried games with a piece of string, unraveling and tying it back into knots. Chase looked up at House just as he limped past, and House tried his hardest to ignore the way that his eyes glistened in the bright florescent lights and not to think about what it meant Chase was doing.

He vomited as soon as he reached the bathroom. A stifled gasp from an older lady when he washed his hands told him that he had ended up in the wrong bathroom again. "Relax-- I'm an OBGYN. Nothing I haven't seen before." He felt only a little bit better when he told her as she walked out that she might want to get herself checked out.

But the glare of his own humor dimmed when he remembers what day it was and who's face were bruised purple and who's lips were blue and who's eyes were like silver pearl, filmy and bloodshot with a tinge of yellow. The eyes that would never open again, and that there was nothing that House could have really done to change it.

He was still slumped against a stucco bathroom stall wall when they shut the lights off for the night.

**Decades**:

House remembers a band he once liked in med school. He thought of them now, the raw, gritty sound of the singer's voice. It never really changed as he went from one plane of sadness to another, but it never stopped carrying raw undiluted emotions. He didn't stop listening to the band until Stacy told him that if he put one more of their albums on repeat, she stop doing things for him. And even then, it was only because she was quite loose with the blow jobs. He spotted the back of her head now, and gave her hair his fiercest glare. Trying to get her to burst into flames or grow another limb was harder than he had once thought; he mused that mutation just wasn't part of her genetic makeup. But once Cuddy's arm snaked around her back and drew them closer, he knew that it wasn't going to work.

The words 'Love' and 'Apart' made him think of a song by the same band, and he has no idea why he's remembered it now. The slight smiles that he was met with when he entered the synagogue were what made him sit in the back; it was the only way that he could escape them. He tried to glare at Stacy again, adding a 'fuck you' in for good measure. She never turned around. In his head, there was a violent confrontation. He would scream, brandish his cane at her. She would scream right back, but cower when he pulled out a pair of eyebrow tweezers.

The irrational anger he felt towards her was good. It helped him focus on things other than the held-back tears that were beginning to give him a headache. So House decided to go with it.

"Hey, Stacy!" His voice was loud, edged with razor sharp anger. It hit the rafters and came back at him. The rabbi stopped, and a few waves of hushed whispers hit him, almost knocked him back down, into his seat. Stacy did not turn around. She would not be turning to look at him for a very long time; he realized; and then the after shock that he never expected anything different from her. Words failed him for a split moment, then came rushing back as he looked at the pale, weepy faces that were focused on him. Jimmy wouldn't have liked the silence at his funeral anyway, and House knew that if he were watching, he would have received one of the candy laced smiles.

He clutched his cane harder in his left hand. He knew that he would find his fingernails imprints in the wood later; back when he was safe in his bed and could cry.

House thought that he should leave it at that; Stacy is full aware of what she did, why she couldn't even look him in the eyes. But then a sardonic comment wormed its way out of his mouth: "Ian Curtis was dead then and he's dead now. No one who you've ever opened your legs to could ever change that."

_Yeah, fuck you_, he thought as he threw open the doors and limped out them, and tried to ignore the ache in his chest as he left the coffin farther and farther behind.

**Impasse**:

The next few days would have frightened the House before Now. He stayed home and didn't bother to take calls, even after his answering machine filled to the brim. Nothing was on there but tears and the flat, accusatory voice of Stacy and Cuddy. ("What in the fuck is wrong with you?" his machine screeched at him. "It was a funeral, for the love of god! Don't you have any respect for him?" But that had made him angry, so he had yelled right back. It wasn't until a few hours later that he realized that he had never picked up the phone.)

He couldn't stop biting his lip. He looked up nervous habits and found it at the top of the list. It had hurt when the tears slipped past his eyes and into the curve of his lips; the salt and copper had been an interesting mix. He only cried twice. The night after the funeral, when he was lying in bed alone for the first time in a long time thinking of brown eyes and the white of lab coats. And even then it had only been a few tears, ones that he wiped away with his rough hands and cursed at.

But when Becky died on General Hospital today (she fell down an elevator shaft, because if she died, Adam could have custody of Olivia, who was heir to the beer company, but Adam was also secretly a woman and Olivia's mother), he had lost control and began to sob until he gasped for air and snot ran out of his nose. And once he started, he couldn't stop. Afterwards, he was amazed at how calm he was. His mouth still tasted of tears-- he was sure that it always would after That Day-- and his hands were shaking.

As he had cried, frustration welled up like a vice up in his chest, next to the anger, the forlornness of it all. He knew that he wasn't being torn apart by Becky's death. But her death had been nothing like _his_. Completely different. But seeing the drawn out death scene-- it made him shudder and try to grasp wildly at any mystery that House had ever had concerning _his_ death.

And damn it; it wasn't _fair_. It had only been a little car accident. His head had slammed into the side of the window like a sledge hammer hitting concrete, and cracked the glass, leaving a little imprinted smudge of blood and a tangle of hair stuck in the crack. But that was it. No broken ribs, no collapsed lungs or amnesia or internal bleeding of any sort. Nothing that could have been fatal.

"_Don't worry; it was nothing. A little head injury." _

Until three hours and eighteen minutes later (that had been the time between the calls from him and Cuddy, her voice some how dull, despite the aberrancy of her words). A subarachnoid hemorrhage had struck suddenly; a bruise building the pressure in the soft folds of _his_ brain, swelling the flesh and causing too much pressure. There was nothing that could have been done anyways; the coroner had told House that the particular vein that had broken was one that was generally only weak due to terminal illness or a history in the family. House had remembered just then that his aunt had died of it several years back, and the thought that he should have known what was going on had made him queasy.

The brunt force of Jimmy's head smashing into the window had been what had triggered it. But nothing had stopped the terrible feeling of missing that had almost knocked him out when Cuddy told him what had happened. Jimmy had passed away in his sleep, alone in his new apartment that had no blinds, alone while his brain quietly shut down and his lips turned blue and his blood started to thicken and rot.

**Juniper:**

"Oh, Greg…"

And she knew. She knew everything about them, everything from the twisted tangle of the blue sheets on their bed and the taste of _his_ spit. She knew and he wasn't sure how, but enough to be angry with her. Those memories and feelings and touches were theirs. No one else's, it was better that way. House had once thought that if no one knew, then it would never end. Because ninety-nine percent of the time, things ended because of the environments they were raised in. And he wouldn't let anyone take what they had had away from him. It had been nothing but pure selfishness on his part, but Cuddy didn't deserve to know anything about the relationship he had had with a dead man.

"Why didn't you say anything?" Her voice was calm, despite the look on her face. Her eyes glittered again, just like Chase and everyone who was at the funeral.

He shrugged. "We never thought that it was anyone else's business." Even saying was hard for House; it was on the principal that once something was said, it was _there_. It lived, it breathed, it was tangible and vivid and like a child: killing it could get you into a helluva lot of trouble. He always thought that the way that Cuddy would find out about them would be a lot more graphic (it always involved a few paper gowns, birthing stirrups, and an empty clinic room. Cuddy would run out, screaming something about her eyes and House would shrug and continue his 'ministrations'.)

"Oh, God!" A fresh wave of tears overwhelmed her, and Cuddy lurched foreword, intent on wrapping her arms around his neck. This time, he let her. "I'm so sorry…" She murmured.

After a few moments he gently untangled her hands. "Why did you come here?" He asked Cuddy. Her face shone in the faint light of his apartment. He realized that for the first time in almost a week, a curtain was open. The feeble sunlight didn't seem to even penetrate the thick aura of his home, though. A pizza box lay on the floor. He wondered briefly if the cockroaches had started to spawn in it yet. He decided right then that if it did, he would name it Gregor.

She cleared her throat. "James' parents wanted your opinion on what they should plant on the grave. No one seemed to know what his favourite plant was. And since you weren't answering your phone, I decided to come down here…"

Cuddy's eyes softened, the tears making them glisten. "And I wanted to see how you were."

"Juniperus communis." He said, short and abrupt. He wanted her out of his apartment, out of his quiet little grieving hole, to leave him with the ghosts of flavors and sounds that were never meant to be words. "Look it up."

Cuddy frowned. He was reminded of a pug dog. "What is tha--" She was interrupted by his great, heaving sigh. He knew that if he had to explain what a scientific name and genius were, then she might not have been as deserving of her title as he had once thought.

"It's a plant. A shrub, really, with prickly leaves and blue berries. It belongs to the genius 'Juniperus', and if I tell you any more, they might take away some of your points and the steak knives." After the words tumbled out of his mouth, he almost added _'and they were his favourite, Jimmy had always thought that they went well in every season.'_

Cuddy walked out before he could finish. As the door quickly closed behind her, leaving a great, hollow echo, she heard him deadbolt the lock.

**Epilogue**:

House knew that it was over. Cuddy would tell people. The slow leak of condensation from his glass of scotch (House knew that he was going down a slippery slope, scotch had been Jimmy's favourite drink. He couldn't even drink without obsessing subconsciously) felt good on his palm. He never realized how fucking uncomfortable it had made him discussing _those_ things with Cuddy, and the evidence was in the taste of sweat he got when he licked his upper lip.

"_You're so fucking narcissistic." _

He caught his own glare in the window pane. It was beginning to grow into that odd twilight hour outside, and House was tired. He made a motion to stand, to pick of his forth leg and hobble into the bedroom, where the bed was clean. And, he thought with relief that was so good it almost made him feel guilty, the pictures that had once been so precariously set on the walls were in the closet. And where the stupid dead smiling eyes could not see him, could do nothing but grin at the cream coloured paint. "Like it should be," House breathed into the quiet room.

"_And you love it, down to the single last snide sentence."_

But he could do nothing but lay his head into the plains of his palms and sigh.

END.

'Heliodora' (the poem in which I found inspiration) belongs to Hilda Doolittle. Go on, you loved it. It was originally supposed to be nine drabbles, around 600 words each, (thusly titled 'Fragments in Nine', thank you very much) but it got to the point where writing no longer came easy, and I never ended up deciding that enough was enough. I'll probably finish it in a spur of gung-ho-ness in a few months, and I'll just repost.

pokes REIVEW!

Summary: When Wilson suddenly dies, there is no one but House left to pick up the pieces. A series of drabbles merged into one. Slash.


End file.
